Minorities Under Siege: Pygmies today in Africa - IRIN

IRIN
I n - D e p t h
1. Features:
Indigenous people and minorities: A global and historic assault
“In every
world region,
m i n o r i t i e s
and indigenous
peoples
have been
e x c l u d e d ,
r e p r e s s e d
and, in many
cases, killed
by their gove
r n m e n t s ,”
said Mark
L a t t i m e r ,
Many minorities and indigenous people are today threatened by the e x e c u t i v e
systematic disintegration of their cultures and livelihoods.
director of
Credit: Rhett A. Butler/mongabay
the nongove
r n m e n t a l
organisation Minority Rights Group International
(MRG) at a press conference in January 2006. The
event was the launch of the first edition of The State of
the World’s Minorities Report, compiled by MRG with
the assistance of various United Nations agencies.
What faces indigenous people and minorities today is
not at all new. Throughout human history, the cultures
and livelihoods – even the existence – of indigenous
peoples have been endangered whenever dominant
neighbouring peoples have expanded their territories
or settlers from far away have acquired new lands by
force. Despite claims that the world has entered a new
era of human rights and democratic representation,
this process of attrition and discrimination continues
today.
The contemporary threats facing indigenous peoples’
cultures and lands – and their status and other legal
rights as distinct groups and citizens – do not always
take the same forms as in previous times. Although
some groups have been relatively successful in maintaining
their cultures and gaining recognition, in most
of the world indigenous peoples are actively seeking
recognition of their identities and ways of life in a
context where this very recognition is being eroded or
abused at an alarming rate.
Indigenous peoples inhabit large areas of the earth’s
surface. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights (OHCHR), these communities
are spread across the world from the arctic to the
South Pacific, numbering approximately 300 million
people. Indigenous or aboriginal peoples are so-called
because they were living on their lands before settlers
came from elsewhere. Most indigenous communities
have retained social, cultural, economic and political
characteristics that are distinct from those of the
national populations where they live. In many cases,
but by no means all, they form a minority.
There is no universally accepted definition of “minorities”;
the word is interpreted differently in separate
societies. Those working to secure rights for minority
groups generally describe them as a nondominant
group of individuals who share certain national,
ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics that are
different from those of the majority population. The
range of those defined as minorities requiring protection
is huge, including groups as diverse as the Roma
people of Albania, hill people in Bangladesh, pygmies
across Central Africa, the Ogoni people of Nigeria, the
Chagos islanders, the Bagobo warriors in the Philippines,
Alaskan native Inuit peoples in the United
States and Tibetan ethnic groups in China.
Since the early 1960s, over 40 tribal groups have been
identified in Kenya alone, illustrating the complexity
of uniting diverse peoples whose only commonality
is sharing a nation’s territory. The largest group today,
the Kikuyu, comprises well over 4 million people, while
smaller groups may comprise only several hundred or
a few thousand members. How, then, are minorities
defined?
The difficulty of definition
Often minority groups and indigenous people face
discrimination and human rights abuses with little
effective protection from the law.
Credit: Rhett A. Butler/mongabay
3
The difficulty in arriving
at an acceptable definition
lies in the variety
of situations in which
minorities exist. Some
live together in welldefined
areas, separated
from the dominant
population, while others
are scattered throughout
the national community
or even across
borders, such as the
Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and
elsewhere in the Middle
East. Some minorities
base a strong sense of
collective identity on a well-remembered or recorded
history, while others retain only a fragmented notion
of their common heritage. In certain cases, minorities
enjoy – or have known – a considerable degree
of autonomy. In others, there is no past history of
autonomy or self-government.
The UN has failed to agree on a more precise definition
of what constitutes a minority beyond that implied in
the title of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons
belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic
Minorities, which was adopted by the General
Assembly in December 1992.
According to MRG, attempting to establish a more rigorous
description has been fraught with difficulties: In
some cases, the motivation for a tighter definition has
been used as a tool to deny certain rights to certain
Minorities Under Siege: Pygmies today in Africa IRIN In-Depth, April 2006 - Page 3